For Lack of a Clean Principled Weapon They Snatch at a Dirty One

Published:PravdaNo. 68, June 10 (May 28), 1917.

      Published according to the text inPravda.Source:Lenin
	  Collected Works,

      Progress Publishers,1964,

      Moscow,Volume 24,

      pages539-540.Translated:Isaacs BernardTranscription\Markup:B. BagginsandD. WaltersPublic Domain:Lenin Internet Archive

      1999

      (2005).You may freely copy, distribute,
	display and perform this work; as well as make derivative and
	commercial works. Please credit “Marxists Internet
	Archive” as your source.

RabochayaGazeta, the organ of the Menshevik
      ministerialists, takes a shotat us by recalling
      the fact that the secret police arrested the Bolshevik
      conciliator Rykov in 1911 in order to give the Bolsheviks of our
      Party “freedom” of action “on the eve of the elections to the
      Fourth Duma” (Rabochaya Gazetarubs this in).

Butwhat does this fact prove? It proves that the secret police
      were clearing the way to the Duma for Malinovsky, who turned out
      to be an agent provocateur. Naturally, the secret police looked
      after their undercover agents.

Isour Party to be blamed for this? It is not, no more than anyhonestman would think of blaming Chernov and Co. for
      mistakenly vindicating Azef, or blaming Yonov and Co. (member of
      the Bund and colleague ofRabochaya Gazeta) for
      exonerating the agent provocateur Zhitomirsky (“Otsov”) in 1910
      in the name of the united Central Committee, or blaming those
      Mensheviks who, in 1904, tried for a time to defend the agent
      provocateur Dobroskokov, or blaming those Cadets who also had
      agent provocateurs in their midst, whose names have now been
      made public.

Allparties without exception have made mistakes in
      failing to detect agent provocateurs. This is a
      fact.Rabochaya Gazeta, which has entered into a bloc
      with Minister Chernov, chooses to ignorehisold
      mistakes and mentions only those of its present opponents. Such
      a method is clearly dishonest, clearly unscrupulous. The blow
      whichRabochaya Gazetaaimed at us has fallen upon
      itself, for it will never dare to admit to the world that it is
      honest to keep silent about Azef while shouting about a similar
      agent provocateur, Malinovsky, for selfish factional motives.